Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a prominent member of Congress and leading voice of the American left, has called on the US government to issue an apology to Latin American countries for decades of meddling in their affairs and causing instability in the region.
The Democratic congresswoman from New York was speaking after a visit to Chile in advance of the 50th anniversary of the coup against Salvador Allende, a democratically elected socialist president actively opposed by Washington.
“I believe that we owe Chile, and not just Chile but many aspects of that region, an apology,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Guardian in an interview at her campaign headquarters in the Bronx. “I don’t think that apology indicates weakness; I think it indicates a desire to meet our hemispheric partners with respect.
“It’s very hard for us to move forward when there is this huge elephant in the room and a lack of trust due to that elephant in the room. The first step around that is acknowledgement and saying we want to approach this region in the spirit of mutual respect, and I think that’s new and it’s historic.”
Since President James Monroe effectively announced a protectorate over the hemisphere in the early 19th century, known as the Monroe doctrine, the US has interfered in nations across Latin America, often in pursuit of its own commercial interests or to support rightwing autocrats against socialists.
In the 1950s and 1960s, the US helped overthrow Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz and Brazilian president João Goulart and made various attempts to assassinate Soviet-backed Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In the 1970s, Argentina and Chile launched brutal crackdowns against perceived socialist threats, often with US support.
In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan’s administration supported anti-communist Contra forces against Nicaragua’s Sandinista government, backed the Salvadoran government against leftist rebels, invaded Grenada after accusing the government of aligning with Cuba and invaded Panama to oust dictator Manuel Noriega.
And in what became known as Operation Condor, eight US-backed military dictatorships – Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador – jointly plotted the cross-border kidnap, torture and murder of hundreds of their political opponents.
Ocasio-Cortez believes a reckoning is long overdue. She said: “Latin America, I believe, due to its proximity, was absolutely unique in US interventionism during the cold war, and that was under [secretary of state] Henry Kissinger and President Nixon.
“I think a lot of Latin America is still very much grappling in the present day with the consequences of coups that were supported by the United States, with Operation Condor that Henry Kissinger helped largely lead. What we see is the ramifications of decades of those policies and how they shape US-Latin American relations today, I think primarily around trust.”
Successive US administrations have struggled to win back that trust. Washington was accused of giving at least tacit support to coups in Venezuela in 2002 and Honduras in 2009. When Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro claimed that the US was trying to orchestrate his overthrow in 2019, he knew the allegation would still have resonance in the region.
There are implications for everything from climate cooperation to immigration initiatives to trade relations. Joe Biden has faced criticism for neglecting Latin America as he seeks to rebuild alliances in Asia and Europe, even as the US faces growing competition from China for influence in the region. Democratic senator Tim Kaine told a recent Senate foreign relations committee hearing: “I struggle to see what this administration is doing in Latin America that has any heft to it.”
But Ocasio-Cortez was part of a congressional delegation – all Latino and Spanish-speaking – who recently travelled to Brazil, Chile and Colombia with the aim of opening a new chapter. In what she describes as a break from past US foreign policy, “we were sending a message not of paternalism or consequences or telling people what to do, but truly saying we’re here to reset this relationship in a new light”.
Climate diplomacy was a central focus of the visit. Brazil is a major driver of deforestation but Ocasio-Cortez – a member of “the squad” of progressives in the House of Representatives – said it was important to communicate that the Amazon is not Brazil’s responsibility alone.
In Chile, the group visited the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which remembers the victims of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Ocasio-Cortez has introduced legislation to declassify documents that could shed light on the CIA’s involvement in the coup.
“The first element of it is just acknowledgement,” she said. “We’re not even at the point of an apology because we haven’t even gotten to an acknowledgement, and that’s why I believe the declassification of these documents is going to be so critical to our relationship to Chile, as well as also acknowledging the unified rightwing movements that the US has very much historically been exporting to Latin America. I don’t say that just in a governmental respect. I say that in terms of the rightwing movements that are growing in the United States.”
Ocasio-Cortez notes that Steve Bannon, a longtime adviser to former president Donald Trump, has convened far-right figures from around the world and coordinated with extremists in Brazil. Bannon’s playbook was in evidence in the 8 January 2023 attacks on government buildings in the capital, Brasilia, she says.
“I think we’re seeing something similar happen in Chile, where there is a concerted effort to erase history and a concerted effort to manipulate public perception of what happened in the 11 September 1973 coup against Salvador Allende and for the United States to declassify these documents, in addition to their diplomatic significance, could also be inoculative against those who seek to erase the history of what has happened in this region.”
A cross-border alliance of rightwing populists has emerged over the past decade to share ideas and pool resources. Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and former Brexit party leader Nigel Farage have all addressed the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Bolsonaro’s son, Eduardo, also a politician, said he and Bannon “share the same worldview”. Tucker Carlson, a former host at Fox News, has lavished praise on Orbán.
Asked if the left needs to build a counterweight network, Ocasio-Cortez, whose trip to Latin America was branded “AOC’s socialist sympathy tour” by Rupert Murdoch’s conservative Wall Street Journal newspaper, replied: “I absolutely believe that the battle for democracy must be transnational and it must be global, and it especially must be hemispheric.
“What we are seeing is not just a progressive left that must unify. I think we are also talking about basic principles of defending democracy. As we’ve seen with Bolsonaro and of course with the very recent history of Pinochet, Chile just began to make its steps into democracy in 1990. That is just when they first started taking these steps out of an authoritarian rightwing regime.”
That means finding a way through the messiness of multiparty democracy to prove it can produce results that autocracy cannot. The congresswoman added: “At the end of the day, for democracy to prevail, democracy must deliver, and I believe that’s where progressive politics come in. We must secure material improvements to the lives of working people, from healthcare to the climate crisis.”
The same AOC that supported Juan Guaidó and backs American intervention in Venezuela so much she’s praised by Fox News for it?
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/AOC-Refuses-To-Condemn-Venezuela-Coup-20190504-0029.html
Clown.
Liberals love their resets, whether it’s with Putin’s Russia or Saddam’s Iraq or Bolsonaro’s Brazil or Milei’s Argentina.
As much as I believe both Guaidó and Maduro are clowns, the USA intervening in Venezuela was such an anachronism. Absolutely unjustifiable.
Something can’t become anachronistic if it never stopped happening
LOL (sad eyes).
“I believe that we owe Chile, and not just Chile but many aspects of that region, an apology,” Ocasio-Cortez told the Guardian in an interview at her campaign headquarters in the Bronx. “I don’t think that apology indicates weakness; I think it indicates a desire to meet our hemispheric partners with respect.
“It’s very hard for us to move forward when there is this huge elephant in the room and a lack of trust due to that elephant in the room. The first step around that is acknowledgement and saying we want to approach this region in the spirit of mutual respect, and I think that’s new and it’s historic.”
Yes, it’s hard to build relationships with victims when we do not address our wrong-doings. She’s so right.
And in what became known as Operation Condor, eight US-backed military dictatorships – Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador – jointly plotted the cross-border kidnap, torture and murder of hundreds of their political opponents.
Imagine, this is the policy we thought was right back then. Crazy.
In Chile, the group visited the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which remembers the victims of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Ocasio-Cortez has introduced legislation to declassify documents that could shed light on the CIA’s involvement in the coup.
Good on AOC - this is how the healing begins. We’re long overdue on this. I’m so grateful for her and the many other like-minded politicians that are acknowledging past wrongs.
I’m so grateful for her and the many other like-minded politicians that are acknowledging past wrongs.
Acknowledging some wrongs that the US did during the cold war against the USSR while at the same time backing wrongs the US is doing currently to wage a new cold war against China/Russia, classic Democrat behavior, really couldn’t expect anything less from her.
And in what became known as Operation Condor, eight US-backed military dictatorships – Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador – jointly plotted the cross-border kidnap, torture and murder of hundreds of their political opponents.
Imagine, this is the policy we thought was right back then. Crazy.
back then?? AMERICA IS STILL DOING THESE THINGS
Of course its a fucking lemmygrad poster.
cry about where the person schooling you comes from instead of actually addressing what they have to say, classic libshit
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Lol tankies are so predictable.
this is how the healing begins
Libs like to acknowledge past wrongs while still supporting the current wrongs. That’s why a lot of us don’t share your enthusiasm on this.
What good would an Apology from the USA do to us?
it wont bring back the dead nor heal the pain it cause to many families who’s only crime was having a family member voting for the wrong party in the USA’s eyes. It wont stop the corruption or the organzed crime the US supported for decades, heck even today they still medley in our affairs, in Haiti in 2004, In 2009 honduras, they tried to start a war in Venezuela with a bunch of mercenaries, they backed a coup in boliva against Evo, they supported and backed people like bolsonaro who did a genocide in the amazon, and to this day they still continue the blockade of Cuba.
there would be no good from an apology because they dont mean it, Democrats are just as imperialist as Republicans, and no amount of DSA members will change that.
she’s Nancy Pelosi for the new generation. she’s going to acknowledge the US’s wrongdoings from decades ago, use some ‘bodies in spaces’ talk, yet still support the same foreign policy that led us here.
Too little, too late
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Yes. The past can’t be changed but real action in the present could go a long way towards improving relations.
The American Government doesn’t care about it’s people let alone anyone else - a hollow apology will not achieve a damn thing because they’ll continue to disrupt foreign governments like they have for the last century and change.
An apology spoken by a few reps is not “real action in the present”
If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.
Well at least one person admitted there’s a knife
An apology would be a good first step, but until America pays for its crimes there can never be justice.
As a Latino I don’t give a fuck about the USA paying for its crimes, to my eyes that’s a crazy dream. I just wish they stop being bully two-face assholes already. The world needs the best USA right now.
And please, I’m talking about representatives of the USA state that most of the time represent corporations, not the actual people.
The US has always been a bunch of companies pretending to be a country. Literally, the founding companies were the Plymouth Company and the London Company (both later known as the Virginia Company) and since the very beginning the US has been a story of hostile corporate acquisition of land and resources and people. It can’t stop being a bully two-face asshole, it’s in the company charter!
Well, this makes a lot of sense, but the US people might want to try to change it. Certainly, the rest of the world is terrified of the US government since Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
tbh I think the only hope is balkanization
The best USA for the world would be a collapsed one
I do not think so. The USA is an important part of our world, whether we like it or not. It’s been around for centuries now, and has a well-deserved place as a leading nation. However, they need to address so many problems within their borders before they start meddling everywhere.
The rules based world order™ is a global imperialist system of monopolistic capital extraction and exploitation of the periphery. The US is the head of that hegemonic order. It provides no value to the rest of the world. It exists to extract value from the rest of the world.
The US position in the world is no more earned than a person who buys a slave deserves the title “master”
I believe that a balanced --more fair for everyone-- status can be achieved and the USA is instrumental for that to happen in current times. I’ll believe the same about the next “head of the hegemonic order” if the USA collapses.
Why do you believe that?
The ruling class doesn’t believe that. They’re figuring out how to stay in charge while the world collapses around them.
What you believe is expressly against what the people that control this global system want and believe.
The only better world will be one where they are overthrown
Believe what exactly? It’s only logical that a more balanced status between nations is possible. History backs that claim. Of course it can go both ways. Honestly don’t know a lot of people in the ruling class to presume what they’re all doing or thinking. I know organized regular people can change things through politics, through culture.
As a Latin American, I would take his share. I do care about the US paying and it would make a huge difference
Think about it. They apologize, they say they are sorry, but they don’t do shit about it.
That would be NOT paying for it yes
Well, I wish world peace too.
sowwy we did a fucky wucky killing aww those peopowo, can we be fweinds?
Hefty hefty lol out of me
good sirbrosefina
An apology is meaningless if democrats are not willing to support any left-wing movement in Latin America. And that includes those who identify as socialists.
Socialist who identify as communist is just turns into dictatorships, and authoritarianism…which is just as bad as right wing fascism.
Most of those left-wing governments in Latin-America were democratically elected. The US had no problem supporting the far-right dictatorships that came afterwards.
Reagan was right about one thing.
“When fascism comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism.”
The ignorant bastard just didn’t know he was a liberal.
Right?
She and I don’t often agree, but I’m 100% in agreement here.
Oh neat, the good cop/CONDOR cop routine
TIL if you just say sorry that fixes everything.
No. But you have to start somewhere. Does anyone expect the US to do better if we won’t acknowledge what we’ve done was wrong?
An acknowledgement would be step 1 of 1000 if it were really to lead to something better. We’ve seen American politicians take this one tiny step before and we know that aren’t able or willing to take any further steps
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And in what became known as Operation Condor, eight US-backed military dictatorships – Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Peru and Ecuador – jointly plotted the cross-border kidnap, torture and murder of hundreds of their political opponents.
She said: “Latin America, I believe, due to its proximity, was absolutely unique in US interventionism during the cold war, and that was under [secretary of state] Henry Kissinger and President Nixon.
“I think a lot of Latin America is still very much grappling in the present day with the consequences of coups that were supported by the United States, with Operation Condor that Henry Kissinger helped largely lead.
Ocasio-Cortez notes that Steve Bannon, a longtime adviser to former president Donald Trump, has convened far-right figures from around the world and coordinated with extremists in Brazil.
Former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and former Brexit party leader Nigel Farage have all addressed the US Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Asked if the left needs to build a counterweight network, Ocasio-Cortez, whose trip to Latin America was branded “AOC’s socialist sympathy tour” by Rupert Murdoch’s conservative Wall Street Journal newspaper, replied: “I absolutely believe that the battle for democracy must be transnational and it must be global, and it especially must be hemispheric.
The original article contains 1,210 words, the summary contains 213 words. Saved 82%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Reminder: AOC was a spoiler candidate, because the DNC and the RNC are arms of our capitalist owner class. Someone who says the truths she says aren’t permitted to climb the ladder within our fully purchased party duopoly.
If the destabilization of socialist regimes through sanctions and political assassinations weren’t enough to convince you that our nation is just another geopolitical baddie, you’re hopeless.
We’re better than North Korea, Russia, and China, but that bar is pathetic. For too many, being better than the absolute worst is just license to rationalize cruelty and punch down.
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Portugal, Spain and the Dutch staring through a window and grinning
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